


Letting Go

by thegizka



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: All four Pevensies forget, Alternate Universe - Dark, Family, Gen, Sad Ending, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 04:30:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20334097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegizka/pseuds/thegizka
Summary: Susan was the first.  Then Peter.  Then Edmund.  Lucy held on the longest, but at some point, you have to grow up.Written for Writer's Month Day 10:  Dark AU.Note:  I do not own The Chronicles of Narnia.





	Letting Go

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if it really counts as a Dark AU, but all four Pevensies forgetting Narnia makes me really sad, so I'm going to say it counts.

Susan was the first to leave Narnia behind. She was always quiet when the other siblings discussed the adventures and lessons they’d had. Peter thought she might resent that their younger siblings got a third trip while she was expected to stay behind and grow up. Edmund suspected she was frustrated at returning to being a child after living as a queen with the power to protect and make changes to an entire country. Lucy believed she had loved Narnia and its people too much, and the loss was something she’d never come to terms with.

The others tried to tactfully bring it up a few times, but Susan always dismissed them.

“It was a fun game when we were younger, but at some point you need to stop playing pretend and face the reality in front of you.” She frowned. “Magical lions and fauns and dwarves don’t pay the bills or solve the world’s problems. Our lives aren’t a fairy tale. They never have been. I think it’s time you stop pretending that they were.”

They decided not to mention Narnia around her after that. She continued believing she was fine and happy, and maybe she was, but Lucy always felt sad when she saw glimpses of Queen Susan the Gentle and had to hold her tongue.

\-----

Peter was the next to forget. He and Susan had always been close and visited each other regularly. Perhaps he had gotten tired of tiptoeing around her and thought Narnia was an easier sacrifice than time with his sister. Edmund suspected he hadn’t quite grasped the “know me in this world” lesson from his final trip, and Lucy worried his stubbornness outweighed his ability to see the truth.

“Susan’s right,” Peter explained, “it’s time to put our childish games behind us. Honestly, I’m a bit ashamed it took me so long. I don’t regret it, though. It was a brilliant game.”

For a while, they tried to convince him of the truth. He was often good-natured about it, recalling memories and musing over their decisions as sovereigns, but he was always distant.

“We had amazing imaginations, didn’t we? I don’t think any of our school chums created entire countries and contemplated international relations during their holidays.”

Edmund and Lucy would agree, but they could tell their elder brother had convinced himself it was all a game. Eventually they found it easier not to mention Narnia at all rather than listen to Peter and Susan treat it so trivially.

\-----

Edmund took much longer to forget. Lucy wondered if it was because he got to go a third time, but he had always been apt to trust her after their time with Professor Kirke. Plus Eustace shared some of their memories, and he and Edmund got along incredibly well. But eventually he drew his sister aside and told her he was done.

“I’m sorry Lucy, but I don’t think I can pretend like this anymore.” His eyes were dark and sad. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot and talking with Peter and Susan. We’re worried. That time we were with the professor was rather traumatic, and we were young. We used Narnia as a coping mechanism, but we have to work through the trauma at some point to heal and move on. I’ve been seeing a therapist, and if you’d like, I can give you some recommendations.”

“But what about the second time, with Caspian? Or the Dawn Treader with Eustace?” she asked. It had hurt when Susan and Peter forgot, but Edmund had been a steady and sure presence by her side. How could he lose Narnia, too?

“The war had just ended, we were transitioning back to school, and we were travelling, which is always stressful. And then next summer we were forced to endure our relatives while the other two were adventuring in America. Remember how beastly Eustace used to be?”

“So you think we made up Mr. Tumnus? The White Witch? Caspain and Reepicheep?”

“It’s not impossible. Some children have been known to hold on to their imaginary friends into early adulthood.”

“And Aslan?” Lucy asked, heart breaking. Her brother had the decency to smile sadly and squeeze her arm sympathetically.

“If Aslan was as benevolent as we believed, would he have allowed me to betray you all and grapple with that guilt afterwards? Or let us grow up as kings and queens and then rip that away from us? Or wait to summon us again until all of our old Narnian friends were dead? You have to admit, some of that is pretty messed up. It’s easier to explain as the imaginings of traumatised children than the machinations of a supposedly good all-powerful lion.”

He was doing his best to be kind. She knew he had probably weighed this over and over for months, maybe years. Edmund was driven towards the truth, so it was even harder to fathom that he was turning his back on it. When they parted ways, Lucy had never felt so lonely.

\-----

Lucy tried holding on for another two years. She’d stopped mentioning Narnia to her siblings, and they had the decency not to pester her about it, but it was too painful to be the only one who remembered. She limited their interactions, though it only made her lonelier.

Sometimes she spoke with Eustace and Professor Kirke, and they introduced her to other people who claimed to know Narnia, but it was harder to find comfort in people she didn’t know. Edmund had said it would be easy for escapists to alter their remembered fantasies to fit the same or similar mold of another’s in an attempt to feel some connection to them. Other than Eustace, she didn’t share any actual memories with them, and the only real connections in all of their stories was Aslan.

It was Aslan who kept Lucy believing for so long. She felt he really could connect all of these people through a magical alternative world where they were capable of incredible things. She trusted Aslan, even if he wasn’t real. She’d looked for him in her own world as he’d asked, and she believed she’d found him in church.

Ironically, that was what finally made her turn her back on Narnia. If she’d found the true Aslan, she no longer needed childhood fairy tales to show her the truth. Maybe it  _ had _ just been a way for a young girl to try and make sense of her circumstances.

There was a great sadness when she finally let go. Lucy would always think of Narnia with fondness and nostalgia, but it was relieving to understand at last what her siblings seemed to have figured out earlier. Narnia was a game that had helped them through a strangely stressful and magical time of their lives. Now that she could face the reality of those experiences, she was closer than ever to her siblings. They were finally on the same page.

\-----

Three months after Lucy came to this conclusion, the Pevensie siblings received word of a tragedy. Their cousin Eustace, Professor Kirke, and a few of their friends whom Lucy had met died tragically in a train crash. It was a shock to them all. Edmund and Lucy took their cousin’s death particularly hard. But they mourned and moved on. They had jobs to do, bills to pay, and lives to live.

“I wish we could have done more for them,” Susan sighed over dinner a few years later. They were revisiting childhood memories, and Narnia had come up for the first time in a while. “They were all convinced that it was more than a game.”

“I talked to Eustace a few times about it,” Edmund admitted. “He believed Narnia and Aslan were the reason he changed. He didn’t think he was capable of doing so on his own.”

“Poor Eustace,” Lucy sighed. “If only he’d believed in himself more. I should have encouraged him more than I did, made him feel appreciated.”

“And the professor,” Peter agreed. “He wasn’t altogether there in the head, but he made our time with him jolly good. I wish I’d talked to him more before the end.”

“Well we still have Mrs. Macready,” Susan chuckled. The others laughed.

“I don’t think any imaginary fantasyland will let us escape from her!” Peter grinned.


End file.
